ITT TECH Closed for business

I know of a few people who have ITT tech degrees or have attended. Now that they are closing I would suggest anyone who is attending to jump ship and come to WGU while your credits still exist

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636-555-3226

If it isn't too late, make sure you print out any official certificates/course lists/etc that you may need in the future to indicate courses you took, grades, graduations, etc for future job applications.

markulous

I feel bad for all the jobs lost, but hopefully this is the beginning of the end for these non-accredited, for-profit schools.

curtisc83

ITT is accredited just super sh*tty.

markulous

Isn't it nationally accredited not regionally?

curtisc83

You are correct

Lexluethar

Hoping this brings change to for-profit education places.

NOC-Ninja

Im surprise its the only for profit college that shut down. we all know its not the only one.

Clm

West wood college kick the can earlier this year as well as some Everest and WyoTech campuses that fall under Corinthian Colleges.

beads

Here is a Bloomberg link. Given the Department of Education's crackdown on for profit schools in general - this won't be the last.

ITT Technical Institutes Shuts Down, Leaving a Hefty Bill - Bloomberg

jeremywatts2005

Guys bashing on ITT as being bad you do not know the education industry as a whole. There are some really crappy and I mean really crappy non profit groups out there. Teaching all sorts of junk to students like microagression courses. There are colleges out there that have tenured professors from overseas who have never touched a system in their life and they grad students who couldn't work on a help desk day one. Remember there are all sorts of colleges out there and not all the for profits are bad and not all the ITT Tech campuses are bad. There are some bad ITT Tech campuses as well as other college groups out there. Trust me I know and have ran into them. It gets really sleazy when you get in on the non profit side. You have state kickbacks and all sorts of political corruption on that side. Also the non profit are held to a lesser standard and do not have some of the more heavily imposed regulations of for profit. Just saying not everything is as it seems.

Verities

I transferred to WGU already to get my credits accepted 2 years ago (gave me 88 from my AS from ITT and SMART transcript), but never finished the BS due to financial reasons and lack of motivation. Overall, I don't think this will affect people who are already employed, but probably will affect those currently seeking employment and at later times.

There is some good coming from this since there are a lot of people who were taken advantage of by this college and they were left with an egregious amount of debt that will now qualify for loan forgiveness.

TeKniques

@=jeremywatts2005;
Can you tell us more about the education industry as a whole then? Do you work in higher education? Personally, I think any institution that's 'selling' an Associates Degree to the tune of $40,000 should be scrutinized. Education costs as a whole are out of control because of how easy it is to get federal/private loans. Hopefully, the good that comes out of this is for higher education to take a step back and look at how they're doing business.

Remedymp

@=TeKniques;

No He has a point and I've brought this point up in the past (before comments were deleted). The for profit schools had many politicians onboard who lobbied for the institutions to begin with. That's how they came to the forefront. The politicians got their cut, and the schools came to be, the federal and private loans made them rich and now you have a bunch nerds up in arms like the sky is falling.

It's not about ITT or Devry or Uni. Of Phoenix. It's the capitalist system that is the problem.

jeremywatts2005

@TeKniques yes I can. I have worked for ITT and several other colleges in the past as a Dean. It is just not an Associates Degree at 40k. I do not know what the current cost is, but there is a career services and placement group, free tutoring, all textbooks, labs equipment and many other things that go into that 40K degree. Some or all of those things you have to buy separately at different colleges or they are not provided. Also that 40K is not all student loans. Many students meet requirements for grants and assistance so the actual degree cost is usually several thousand lower.

On the for profit side the college is also required to meet placement goals by the DOE. This does not mean that Johnny who graduated in IT goes to work in a grocery store it means Johnny has to work in IT. There is a detailed form that has to be signed off on that states the job description and the work Johnny does is over 85% related to his degree it also has to meet certain salary requirements. Just because Johnny is working in IT does not mean his placement will count because he has to have work at a set salary level for the degree to ensure students graduating from For Profit do not default. They even had to meet these standards in this economy. It is brutal. Also they cannot have more than 90% of their profit come from FA which means 10% of the students are cash payers.

The instructors in many of the for profits are non tenured staff and work adjunct having a connection into the real world. Some for profits are starting to go that route now and move from tenured faculty. You also have to take into account that company is taking a risk on a student who is non traditional. This means they did not come right from high school and might have went to college elsewhere and are working full time at another job with a family. These students require additional hand holding which for profits do have to do. This takes staff to make the follow up calls, check on the student and push them toward graduation (motivation). Yes I know they are adults but look at it this way some of these folks were on welfare when they came in and came out with a 40K a year job with full benefits and now are successful. I have some students right now that I worked with that went welfare to 80K a year jobs after 4 or 5 yrs of graduating. They are easily repaying any student loan they took out.

These are not the same standard not for profits have. A lot of them not all do not care about placement rates or salary. Or are even held to a standard for it. Ask a non for profit what there graduation and placement rates are many could not tell you because they do not track it. Also the on the non profits they are state funded which means you are paying something for them. I know I get my tax bill for the community college every year in Texas. With state funds being short in many states it means funding for equipment, instructors and so on also gets cut. I know I hired a ton of instructors to work in For Profit from Non Profit. Guess what they loved working in the for profit even though they made the same money. Why because the environment was more non traditional and they could teach skills that were useful in field. Many for profits have structured curriculum, but encourage instructors to use real world techniques. Like I said not all for profits are good and not all non profits are good. You have good in bad in both. Just remember the standards for the profit school are higher in most cases.

TeKniques

Thanks Jeremy. Obviously you have some experience and first hand knowledge of the industry. To clarify, I don't think there is any difference between the for-profit and non-profit fat cats as it seems most of it is a racket given how easy it is to get grants and loans. I just think that the costs for an education are out-of-control and a lot of institutions (for and non-profit) can easily exploit it.

CIO

On the bright side, some students can have their student loans that was used for the school can discharge those loans.

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/closed-school

thomas_

It's probably a good idea for any one who has taken any classes with them to keep the syllabus from any classes they have taken to try to get transfer credit from other instituions. I'm not sure how likely that is, but it's worth a shot. This is actually a good piece of advice for anybody taking college credits until they have their degree in hand. You never know what may interrupt your progress and class syllabi are extremely useful(if not necessary) when you are submitting petitions for transfer credit, class equivalencies, etc. A lot of times they are held on file for a limited amount of time before they are discarded.

Pseudonymous

Wow, I was considering going to this school. I'm shocked they closed down after all this time.

volfkhat

Cameron M wrote: »

Wow, I was considering going to this school. I'm shocked they closed down after all this time.

Maybe take another look at your local Community College curriculum :]

And Look sat Jeremy MAKING the case for For-Profit institutions!!

Who does this guy think he is??
Challenging my pre-conceived notions, and making me feel (generally) uncomfortable in the process!!

lol
:]

xXxKrisxXx

Saw this today and was pretty horrified. I am ITT Technical Institute Alumni from 2011 (not that this means anything). I had known the school was sketchy from when I started back in mid 2009 but chose to stick it out. My last quarter there in 2011, the handful of remaining students that they had left that hadn't dropped out were told that the campus cancelled its Bachelor Degree program in Software Development at the time. Everyone knows how useless an Associates Degree is in Programming. I remember at the time the campus was trying to encourage us to enroll in their Project Management Curriculum. Their sales pitch was, 'You can get a job doing project management with programming emphasis.' To those that weren't interested they literally told them, 'perhaps your units can transfer over to University of Phoenix.' I swear it's like some of these for-profit schools are in bed with each other.

I definitely agree with what Remedydymp said about it being the Capitalist system. I'm not a socialist and don't identify with the left or right. Not trying to get political here, it just became more and more obvious that their goal was money each quarter I stuck it out. Jeremy - being an ex-employee there, your post comes off like you're trying to stand up for the school to some extent. What you didn't mention is that a lot of their courseware from what I saw was customized to the point where a majority of the books had to be included with tuition. If they used standard text books like community colleges used, I could of saved thousands of dollars renting off of Amazon or Chegg like students are doing these days. I also could of purchased books second hand. You should get a bit more in-depth about how they treat their employees there since you have insider knowledge. I knew a couple employees who were enrolled in degree programs at the time taking advantage of the discount. The school had no issues letting these people go if they could not enroll enough students. Not only this, but I would hear tale after tale about how constantly they'd fire people and bring on more staff. Their vetting process for instructors seemed to be pathetic at best.

I had instructors who had worked in the industry like you mentioned, but you could tell they found the curriculum to be a joke. A lot of the courseware was very out of date. To those who work in the industry during the day and were teaching students during night classes or on Saturdays - it was all honestly just for extra money. I remember taking a Web Design class in my Degree Program and the Professor would login to Lynda.com and literally stream content from the website to use for half an hour to 1 hour. Afterwards he would say, 'lets go do our labs' where we would head into the computer lab with step by step labs on how to do things. 1 day that will never escape me because it was incredibly hilarious is when Lynda.com was down for an update or something. The instructor swallowing hard knowing he couldn't teach the content of the course did not even try to lecture, we skipped straight to labs that day.

The school goes beyond sketchier than this. A year after graduating, I noticed that ITT Technical Institute came out with updated degree programs. Updated content is great, but they purposely added .5 hours worth of credits to courses. This way, people trying to transfer any courses into the school they could say, 'Sorry your class from this other school was 4 units, our course is 4.5. You will have the take the class again.' I feel like I can just rant and rant for days. Those of you here who have seen my posts about the OSCP can verify I have a tendency to ramble on.

Pretty disgusted that I gave a couple years to a school that wasn't worth anything at all in the end. I am very pleased they shut down, this place was cancer to many people. Instead of hearing some of your experience working for them, jeremywatts2005 - I would honestly love for you to tell them how you witnessed the letting go of your fellow colleagues during the time you worked there. I'd love to hear about how under qualified or careless the staff was and how corporate only saw this place as a money scheme. I remember my first quarter in being read and having to sign something acknowledging along the lines of, 'only 17% of people graduate'. As skeptical as I was seeing my first initial class sizes being between 30-50 students, the further I stuck it out - the statistics didn't lie. This place is a joke, and I'm a joke for actually being apart of the small percentage of students who stuck it out through the end.

By the way - having graduated back in 2011, I am not eligible for the student loan forgiveness (called today and checked). I will be paying for my mistake of picking this school for several years to come.

volfkhat

I got my undergrad back in the '90s from a brick & mortar university (private, Division-1 school).

I had some Great professors.
I had some BAD professors.

In one instance, i got an "A-" in Calculus 1, but an "F/Withdrawal" in Calc II (different instructor).
I had to go to my local community college in the summer to retake the class (oh the shame).

Well Guess what?
My instructor at the local CC was TEN TIMES the educator than my university professor.

That's when i learned an important lesson: An Institution is only as Strong as its Educators!

But you would be surprised at how little of our tuition actually Goes to the instructors.

The "Higher education" system in this country is a joke.

Kris,
thanks for sharing your experience. I hope you were able to leverage a Little value from your degree.

~volf

ITHokie

Remedymp wrote: »

@=TeKniques;

No He has a point and I've brought this point up in the past (before comments were deleted). The for profit schools had many politicians onboard who lobbied for the institutions to begin with. That's how they came to the forefront. The politicians got their cut, and the schools came to be, the federal and private loans made them rich and now you have a bunch nerds up in arms like the sky is falling.

It's not about ITT or Devry or Uni. Of Phoenix. It's the capitalist system that is the problem.

What you described is not capitalism - it's crony capitalism. Do you have any evidence that for-profit institutions materialized on the basis of lobbying Congress (or whatever entities you're referring to)? I would actually be really interested in reading up on that.

bigdogz

@Remedymp

I can understand your frustration. But ITHokie has a point. For all of the student loans funded by the government that hangs around your neck. That money goes ..... back to the government. I know that non profit schools are generally less expensive and ask for govt grants and mils by the their respective state. But why does the cost of tuition go up for those universities as well? I only obtain a discount if I live in the state of the college I want to attend and not a flat cost across all of the universities nationwide.

NOC-Ninja

School paying politicians or politicians getting hook up from the school is the same. (lots of politicians there get their kids to school and get their kids in VIP treatment).

We can have a list of for profit schools here such as Univ of Phoenix, Capella, Colorado Technical University .

Let's even add CSU and UC there. How can you call these non profit when they charge kids thousands of dollars on tuition, books, and a room? Where the hell do they get the money? From mommy and daddy?
Meanwhile, the kid graduate and then they get a student debt. They will be lucky if they get a job depending on their degree.
Schools promise kids for a better tomorrow but they dont tell them the truth. The truth that they will fail in life, them getting a good job depends on their degree and networking (mommy and daddy is rich, mommy and daddy are already in the field that they are getting into). If mommy and daddy are not there, then they will have to work 5x as hard to get to where they want to be.

I have friends that grad in UC and CSU schools with IT and comp sci degrees. They cannot beat my pay.

just my .02.

ITT grad here. Currently, finishing MSISA in WGU.

Remedymp

ITHokie wrote: »

What you described is not capitalism - it's crony capitalism. Do you have any evidence that for-profit institutions materialized on the basis of lobbying Congress (or whatever entities you're referring to)? I would actually be really interested in reading up on that.

Well, Crony Capitalism was exactly how the country was founded. But, that's besides the point.

This was a planned operation. They're not sanctioning the schools because of morality. They're sanctioning them now because lobbyist got their cut and the CEO's made off very well. This is also happening with the Private For Profit prisons as well like CCA and GEO.

The idea that you can shut down an institution because they promise jobs to students that they could never fulfill in an slumping economy, in a country that has essentially outsourced all of its serviced based job oversees is a joke. If that were the case, they would have to shut down many other private institutions as well like NorthEastern or NorthWestern or George Washington university, etc. But, they're not going to go after those schools (D1-D4).

If you want to know more about the lobbying in congress, I believe PBS ran a documentary about this about 10 years ago called College or something to that effect. I can't remember name now, but they exposed all of this.

Our already pay for the public institutions to begin with, why should a resident have to pay for attending the same institution?

And they wonder why the US is ranked very low in comparison to other countries when it comes to post secondary education.

Danielm7

NOC-Ninja wrote: »

How can you call these non profit when they charge kids thousands of dollars on tuition, books, and a room? Where the hell do they get the money? From mommy and daddy?

There are a bunch of ways to go with the non-profit discussion, but that doesn't mean you aren't supposed to pay for tuition, books and rooms.

I have friends that grad in UC and CSU schools with IT and comp sci degrees. They cannot beat my pay.

Also, consider that a lot of people going to these for profit schools aren't just going for IT. IT is unique in that people can make 6 figures without any degree. Outside of sales roles, good luck doing that in most other fields. Do your friends with with other degrees also have a CCIE and a bunch of experience? Probably not. But someone goes for a marketing or accounting job, they are going to care if you have a degree, and likely will care where it's from.

Legacy User

I wonder if the degrees that were already obtained from ITT will still hold accreditation after closure. Not sure how that works but if they don't it would be terrible and unfortunate if that was the case.

thomas_

I always wonder where all the money in tuition goes. I understand their are infrastructure and operating costs, but I always wonder if those expenses justify the high cost of tuition. When I was in college I watched a youtube video of an open meeting with the Chancellor/president and I heard some of the instructors talk about how there were a lot of Deans and Assistant Deans running around that they didn't even know what there function was at the school. It would be interesting to see the salary distributions and how much the Dean's, Assistant Dean's and the executive level staff's salaries take up in the university budget.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is who is getting rich off of the rising cost of tuition at colleges/universities even if they are non-profit or state ran? I know non-profits return any excess money back into the organization, but they still can have highly paid executives. What about state universities? Is it just that they are inefficiently run organizations and the rising cost of tuition is a reflection of that?

Danielm7

I'm sure administration is a huge cost, I'd be curious to see the breakdown as well. I know in my experience the schools have changed too. For example, my wife went to a local collage maybe 15 years ago. We went back recently for some paperwork. The place has gone up in cost SIGNIFICANTLY, and it looks completely different. The old cafe was tiny but fine. Now they have chain restaurants in there and starbucks. The gym that was being built 10 years ago, is now already being replaced because the kids expect something nicer. Some of these building projects are in the 10s of millions of dollars it's crazy. We asked someone at the school about all the changes and they said all the schools locally have upgraded so unless it looks as nice or nicer than the other places kids won't want to go there no matter how good of an education they offer.

My own niece just turned down a really good package at a great school in state for another one that has a Chipotle... The difference between the costs will be over 30K a year. Her parents thought it was fine and funny that she used that as the deciding factor. She's entering a 6 year program so the restaurant choice on campus will cost a total of 180 thousand dollars extra, and no one else sees a problem with this.

jeremywatts2005

xXxKrisxXx wrote: »

Saw this today and was pretty horrified. I am ITT Technical Institute Alumni from 2011 (not that this means anything). I had known the school was sketchy from when I started back in mid 2009 but chose to stick it out. My last quarter there in 2011, the handful of remaining students that they had left that hadn't dropped out were told that the campus cancelled its Bachelor Degree program in Software Development at the time. Everyone knows how useless an Associates Degree is in Programming. I remember at the time the campus was trying to encourage us to enroll in their Project Management Curriculum. Their sales pitch was, 'You can get a job doing project management with programming emphasis.' To those that weren't interested they literally told them, 'perhaps your units can transfer over to University of Phoenix.' I swear it's like some of these for-profit schools are in bed with each other.

I definitely agree with what Remedydymp said about it being the Capitalist system. I'm not a socialist and don't identify with the left or right. Not trying to get political here, it just became more and more obvious that their goal was money each quarter I stuck it out. Jeremy - being an ex-employee there, your post comes off like you're trying to stand up for the school to some extent. What you didn't mention is that a lot of their courseware from what I saw was customized to the point where a majority of the books had to be included with tuition. If they used standard text books like community colleges used, I could of saved thousands of dollars renting off of Amazon or Chegg like students are doing these days. I also could of purchased books second hand. You should get a bit more in-depth about how they treat their employees there since you have insider knowledge. I knew a couple employees who were enrolled in degree programs at the time taking advantage of the discount. The school had no issues letting these people go if they could not enroll enough students. Not only this, but I would hear tale after tale about how constantly they'd fire people and bring on more staff. Their vetting process for instructors seemed to be pathetic at best.

I had instructors who had worked in the industry like you mentioned, but you could tell they found the curriculum to be a joke. A lot of the courseware was very out of date. To those who work in the industry during the day and were teaching students during night classes or on Saturdays - it was all honestly just for extra money. I remember taking a Web Design class in my Degree Program and the Professor would login to Lynda.com and literally stream content from the website to use for half an hour to 1 hour. Afterwards he would say, 'lets go do our labs' where we would head into the computer lab with step by step labs on how to do things. 1 day that will never escape me because it was incredibly hilarious is when Lynda.com was down for an update or something. The instructor swallowing hard knowing he couldn't teach the content of the course did not even try to lecture, we skipped straight to labs that day.

The school goes beyond sketchier than this. A year after graduating, I noticed that ITT Technical Institute came out with updated degree programs. Updated content is great, but they purposely added .5 hours worth of credits to courses. This way, people trying to transfer any courses into the school they could say, 'Sorry your class from this other school was 4 units, our course is 4.5. You will have the take the class again.' I feel like I can just rant and rant for days. Those of you here who have seen my posts about the OSCP can verify I have a tendency to ramble on.

Pretty disgusted that I gave a couple years to a school that wasn't worth anything at all in the end. I am very pleased they shut down, this place was cancer to many people. Instead of hearing some of your experience working for them, jeremywatts2005 - I would honestly love for you to tell them how you witnessed the letting go of your fellow colleagues during the time you worked there. I'd love to hear about how under qualified or careless the staff was and how corporate only saw this place as a money scheme. I remember my first quarter in being read and having to sign something acknowledging along the lines of, 'only 17% of people graduate'. As skeptical as I was seeing my first initial class sizes being between 30-50 students, the further I stuck it out - the statistics didn't lie. This place is a joke, and I'm a joke for actually being apart of the small percentage of students who stuck it out through the end.

By the way - having graduated back in 2011, I am not eligible for the student loan forgiveness (called today and checked). I will be paying for my mistake of picking this school for several years to come.

OK several things here like I said you had good and bad ITT Tech institutions. The whole deal with the credits was because of the department of education wanted them to reduce the amount of courses, costs and time. This is why some of the courses were moved to 4.5 credit hours. Also 3 semester hour usually is equivalent in most cases to 4.5 quarter credit hours. Also there was a push to go to internships which I already was doing but not as part of curriculum. Many campuses had to start that whole piece which changed the credit hour structure. For me it was easy because I already had the foundation.

I also worked on the curriculum committee and know first hand the curriculum was up to date from corporate down. Once it got to the campuses it was how they instituted that curriculum. Having been in the IT Infosec field all my instructors knew I expected nothing but the top level instruction in every course. This meant if it was something that we had discontinued using then we would not use it in the classroom and utilizes the new method. If you had me as your Dean, Chair or instructor I assure you the experience would have been vastly different. I have hundreds and hundreds of students still in contact with me today all who are successful. However I worked myself to death to ensure they were properly educated and trained and that is what differentiated me from other campuses and colleges. My students all were placed in field with good pay before graduating. I pushed companies to come onto campus and even worked with local mom and pop companies to hire them in to help them get experience so they were field ready.

Curriculum at almost every college is always somewhat behind you cannot have curriculum at any college that is current with the same year because there is a process to get it approved. Everything has to go through an accreditation committee to ensure it meets the standards for DOE and the Accrediting body this requires time, course rewrites and multiple lay approvals. Not the fault of any college it is just the process.

The class size is a downfall of the business side administration. As an academic dean we max at 20 to 25 students then split the class. The business side always wanted it higher to increase profit. Less teachers and larger classrooms to maximize space utilization. I never allowed it on my campus and almost lost my job a few times for fighting back, but stuck to my guns. The part about it being a scheme is nothing more than your opinion. Some students and I dare say many students came out with degrees in field from ITT and went to work and are making a great living with that degree.

I myself will always say there is good for profits and bad and there are good non for profits and there are bad. I know I used to get students who failed out of the community college system and all it took was a little extra time to help them. One student couldn't do binary worth a crap and flunked out of the community college system because of binary and math in general. I paid a tutor on my campus at no charge to him to sit with him every week for 4 hours to ensure he had help in math. It was a promise I made to his mom when he signed up. That student graduated and is working in networking and makes great money. It was the extra I gave him to help him. No community college would have done that for him I dare say. Every ITT had the ability to do things like this some just did not know the system or cared too much about the profit. They looked too close at the penny to see the dime. I even had a deal with the campus president that any student who took A+, Net+ or Sec+ and passed could bring in the printed sheet that shows they passed and we would pay for the cert. It helped placement rates so why would you not pay the $400 or $500 it costs for the cert if it helps the placement rate of the student and the campus.